As he spoke, she saw that one of his determined looks settled upon his countenance—a pretty certain symptom that she had better be guided by his advice.
“Come, Barney,” said he, “throw up that window and send the poor man here, until he tells us what he knows about this affair.”
The window was accordingly thrown open, and in a few minutes Bandy Brack made his appearance outside, and, on being interrogated on the subject in question, took off his hat, and was about to commence his narrative, when Lindsay said,
“Put on your hat, Bandy; the sun's too hot to be uncovered.”
“That's more of it,” said his wife; “a fine way to make yourself respected, Lindsay.”
“I love to be respected,” he replied sternly, “and to deserve respect: but I have no desire to incur the hatred of the poor by oppression and want of charity, like some of my female acquaintances.”
“Plase your honor,” said Bandy, “all that I know about the Shan-dhinne-dhuv, or the Black Spectre, as the larned call him, won't require many words to tell you. It's not generally known what I'm goin' to say now. The haunted house, as your honor, maybe, remimbers, was an inn—a carman's inn chiefly—and one night, it seems, there came a stranger to stop in it. He was dressed in black, and when he thought it time to go to bed he called the landlord, Antony McMurt, and placed in his hands a big purse o' goold to keep for him till he should start at daybreak, as he intended, the next morning. Antony—
“Ay,” said Lindsay, interrupting him, “that accounts for the nature of the villain's death. I remember him well, Bandy, although I was only a boy at the time; go on—he was always a dishonest scoundrel it was said—proceed.”
“Well it seems, Antony, sir, mistook him for a Protestant parson; and as he had a hankerin' afther the goold, he opened a gusset in the man's throat that same night, when the unsuspectin' traveller was sound in that sleep that he never woke from in this world. When the deed was done Antony stripped him of his clothes, and in doing so discovered a silver crucifix upon his breast, and a bravery (breviary) under his head, by which he found that he had murdhered a priest of his own religion in mistake. They say he stabbed him in the jigler vein wid a middoge. At all events, the body disappeared, and there never was any inquiry made about it—a good proof that the unfortunate man was a stranger. Well and good, your honor—in the coorse of a short time, it seems, the murdhered priest began to appear to him, and haunted him almost every night, until the unfortunate Antony began to get out of his rason, and, it is said, that when he appeared to him he always pointed the middoge at him, just as if he wished to put it into his heart. Antony then, widout tellin' his own saicret, began to tell everybody that he was doomed to die a bloody death; in short, he became unsettled—got fairly beside himself, and afther mopin' about for some months in ordher to avoid the bloody death the priest threatened him wid, he went and hanged himself in the very room where he killed the unfortunate priest before.”
“I remember when he hanged himself, very well,” observed Lindsay, “but d—n the syllable of the robbery and murder of the priest or any body else ever I heard of till the present moment, although there was an inquest held over himself. The man got low-spirited and depressed, because his business failed him, or, rather, because he didn't attend to it; and in one of these moods hanged himself; but by all accounts, Bandy, if he hadn't done the deed for himself the hangman would have done it for him. He was said, I think, to have been connected with some of the outlaws, and to have been a bad boy altogether. I think it is now near fifty years ago since he hanged himself.”